Conversations is a new series of online distributed dialogues and interviews. The first collection of Conversations marks that art theorist Mathias Danbolt joined FRANK, a queer feminist platform run by Liv Bugge and Sille Storihle since 2012.

In 2013, a Norwegian arts magazine invited FRANK to interview Danbolt about his PhD dissertation Touching History: Art, Performance, and Politics in Queer Times. The interview quickly turned into a conversation – one that continued beyond the pages of the magazine. With Conversations FRANK seeks to create a structure for instigating new dialogues of this kind – dialogues that unfold across and between different aesthetic, theoretical, historical, and political positions.

Conversationscontinues FRANK’s long-term work on creating platforms for exchanges and discussions on the politics of art, gender, sexuality, and racialization. The conversations published here builds a bridge between Danbolt’s project Trikster–Nordic Queer Journal (2008-2010) and FRANK, by presenting a selection of his previous interviews, alongside unpublished and new dialogues. Triksterwas an early inspiration to FRANK, with its aspiration to nurture a critical discourse on queer feminist art and politics. Now this aspiration has found a new framework, in the form of Conversations.

The project will be launched on May 18 at 7 pm atArchive Kabinett. There will be a public reading
from a selection of the Conversations together with
Renate Lorenz and Ester Fleckner.

Archive Books
Dieffenbachstraße 31
10967 Berlin

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FRANK is an Oslo based platform, established to nurture art and critical discourse revolving around gender, desire and sexuality. The platform operates in different locations and with various co-curators. Our aim is to build a community and create discussions that address hegemonic structures in society.

Since 2012, the artists Liv Bugge and Sille Storihle have run FRANK. The art historian and queer critic Mathias Danbolt joined FRANK in 2015.

A new issue of the Norwegian feminist magazine Fett is out today on the International Women’s Day. The issue looks really great with lots of good feminist stuff. I am honored to have a new column in this great feminist magazine, and my first text is a self study course in how-to-become-a-queer-feminist-killjoy entitled, “Selvstudiekurs i queerfeministisk gledesdreping”.

The text is written in homage to feminists who have learned me about the importance of ‘killing joy’: Sara Ahmed, Audre Lorde and Jamaica Kincaid – heroines of mine that I want to propagate in every way I can. If one could just have a little bit of their fierceness, wit, and intelligence, then things would be much better. I hope you all have a great and angry March 8!

I have an article in the new issue of Vagant entitled “Tilbake til fremtiden” (Back to the future) dealing with the situation of queer theory, gender studies and critical thinking more broadly in the context of Norwegian public debate.

The text is a reworked version of the talk I gave in Oslo in November, and a large part of the text is a reading of public debate following the TV show “Hjernevask” (Brainwash) that, in short, attempted to disarticulate and kill off gender studies and queer theory…

There is an interview with me in today’s issue of Klassekampen about the article – read it online here. Vagant will be released on Wednesday March 9.

The fantastic artist duo Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz has just released a new book about their work entitled Temporal Drag(Hatje Cantz, 2011). The book includes articles and documentation of their collaboration – covering material on works like Normal Work (2007), N.O. Body (2008), Salomania (2009), and Contagious (2010).

I’m really happy that my article “Disruptive Anachronisms: Feeling Historical with N.O. Body” is included in this beautiful book, where it stands side by side with essays by among others the fantastic queer theorist Elizabeth Freeman, queer film theorist Marc Siegel, and art theorist/writer Diedrich Diederichsen. The book also includes a conversation with the artist by the great artist-curator Andrea Thal. For those who prefer reading things in French, all texts are translated.

Lambda Nordica, the great Swedish LGBT-studies journal, has just released a good looking issue on “Queer Methodologies”. I have an article in the issue entitled “We’re Here! We’re Queer? Activist Archives and Archival Activism,” related to my ongoing PhD project. It was written quite long ago, following my paper presented at the Feminist Methodologies conference in Stockholm in February 2009. I guess I think slightly different about some things now, but hey, that’s the joy of publishing from projects-in-progress. My abstract goes like this:

In the summer of 2008, a demonstration against hate crimes was organized during the Queer Festival in Copenhagen. In the article We’re Here! We’re Queer? Activist Archives and Archival Activism this quite conventional demonstration functions as the starting point for a discussion of activist archives and the writing of queer activist history. Discussing the recent queer theoretical interest in archives and historiography, the author argues for the importance of rethinking the material, temporal, and conceptual understandings of the archive when working with activist history. The text presents some of the challenges facing scholars wanting to write about social activist projects, from problems of documenting ephemeral actions to the deliberate destruction of archival material in fear of state surveillance and control. Through an analysis of the chanting of “We’re Here! We’re Queer! We’re not Gonna Disappear!” in the Copenhagen demonstration, the author develops the concept of archival activism, describing how activist actions can function as living archives of previous actions. Emphasizing the importance of embodied knowledge and memory in activist history, the author shows how travels and circulations of theoretical concepts and activist repertoires are central to the development of present queer activism.

This is the table of contents of the issue:

Fanny Ambjörnsson, Pia Laskar, Patrik Steorn: “Introduction”

Irina Schmitt: “Do you have a boyfriend? Feeling queer in youth and education research”

Anu Koinvunen: “Yes we can? The promise of affect for queer scholarship”

Mark Graham: “Things in the Field. Ethnographic research into objects and sexuality”

Since the distribution of the book have been rather marginal, at least outside of Sweden, I have just made the text available here on my new homepage (designed by CYF). So, for all you Norwegian readers out there – here is my thoughts on the “Perfekte sammenbrudd” in Elmgreen and Dragset’s The Collectors.